FILE - This Oct. 19, 2012 file photo shows actor-director Ben Affleck posing for photographers during a photocall to present his movie "Argo" in Rome. The film was nominated for an Academy Award for best picture on Thursday, Jan. 10, 2013. Alan Arkin was nominated for best supporting actor and Chris Terrio for best adapted screenplay, but Affleck was not nominated for either best actor or best director for his work in the film. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia, file)

It’s no surprise that Steven Spielberg’s elegantly-wrought drama “Lincoln” leads the 2013 Oscar field with 12 Oscar nominations. Not only is the film, which follows President Abraham Lincoln as he wrangles passage of the 13th Amendment, a handsome affair, it is rife with fine performances. Not the least of which is Daniel Day-Lewis as the 16th president. What jarred during Thursday morning’s Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences Oscar nominee announcement was the absence of “Argo” director Ben Affleck and Kathryn Bigelow in the best directing category.

“Argo” has seven nominations. Bigelow’s “Zero Dark Thirty” (which opens here Friday) has five nominations, including one of best picture. Was this the reason for the gasp at the 5:30 a.m. PT announcement by this year’s Oscar telecast host, Seth MacFarlane, and actress Emma Stone?

With eight nominations, the success of “Silver Linings Playbook” seems to once again confirm producer/distributor Harvey Weinstein’s legendary Oscar-season muscle. As good as David O. Russell’s romantic dramedy is, it usurped spots of the more deserving: Bradley Cooper for best actor instead of John Hawkes of “The Sessions,” and the gifted Russell for best directing over Bigelow and Affleck.

Another Academy voter snub that may have special resonance for Colorado audiences is that of “The Dark Knight Rises.” Although the Academy expanded how many films can be nominated for best picture from five to ten, it has yet to really honor a worthy tent-pole style film. It had its chance this year with “Dark Knight,” Christopher Nolan’s final installment in his Batman trilogy, starring Christian Bale. Is it possible that Nolan’s very thoughtful, finely crafted film has been tarnished permanently by the July 20, Aurora theater shootings? (Preliminary hearings for the man accused of killing 12 and wounding 58 at a midnight screening of “Dark Knight” began Monday.)

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Academy voters embraced two films in ways that met the hopes but likely went beyond the expectations of even their distributors. Director Benh Zeitlin’s debut feature, “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” grabbed four nominations, including best picture, best director, best adapted screenplay and best actress for nine-year-old wonder Quvenzhané Wallis. Austrian master Michael Haneke’s transcendent drama about an octogenarian couple, “Amour,” which screened at the Telluride Film Festival in September received five. It’s set to open in Denver, Feb. 1.